History

History of Griffioen Transport.

Griffioen Transport is a more than 80 years old family business.

In 1929 founder Henk Griffioen bought the courierservice ‘Blijleven’ from his employer in the villages Bodegraven and de Meije in the Netherlands. He soon changed the name to ‘Bode Griffioen v/h Blijleven’. During the first years the company was based on Meije number 10 in Bodegraven. The courier service at first used a horse and carriage but soon this was exchanged by a truck.

At that time the work consisted mainly of picking up orders for delivery to several suppliers and wholesalers in the nearby town of Gouda. In the afternoon the ordered goods at these companies would be picked-up to be delivered the same day in Bodegraven. The merchandise for the towns of de Meije and Zegveld would be delivered the next day, together with the loaded merchandise of ‘Van Gend en Loos’ of which Bode Griffioen v/h Blijleven was the fixed transporter in de Meije and Zegveld.

When ‘grandfather’ Henk Griffioen fell ill and was not able to run the business anymore, the second generation took over. At first this was Arie Griffioen.

In those days there were two piano and organ businesses in Bodegraven, named ‘Vreeken’ and ‘Boot’. Griffioen already transported instruments for these companies to private customers. When the other two brothers, Jan and Hennie, joined in, the business was able to grow.

They were able to start driving with three cars to expand the transport. When more and more cars and drivers were added to the business, it was time to move to a larger location on the street ‘Binnenweg’. Arie’s work shifted more into planning and office management. The courier service expanded further including more moving work, especially in the town of Gouda. When the business started specialising in the transportation of organs, pianos and grand pianos, both the moving department and the courier service were closed down.

The sons of Mr. Vreeken started a factory for electronic organs in Bodegraven and Griffioen took care of the delivery of the production. Thanks to this Griffioen frequently visited musical instrument businesses. Many of these businesses had problems with the delivery of their instruments outside of their city. This was the beginning of the transportation of instruments through the entire Netherlands and Belgium.

When electronic organs became a rage, there was an increase of electronic organ factories and importers of organs. Griffioen also became the transporter for these businesses. Later the transportation of pianos and grand pianos were added to the field of expertise. The first customers in this market were ‘Rippen’ and ‘Kawai’. Up to this day we still arrange the transportation for Kawai.

When we found out that our customers also felt the need for storage, we decided to build a new office building on the street ‘Beneluxweg’ which was larger and more suitable than the building on the Binnenweg. Later in time this building was extended with a customs warehouse for the import of instruments from Japan, Korea and China.

After some years the business also became too big for this building so we moved to our current location on Schumanweg 1 in Bodegraven in The Netherlands.

The company is now run by the third generation of the family Griffioen.